by K. W. Jeter
“Cole?” That was me answering on the other end. “Is that you –”
“Get over here,” he said. “Now.”
EIGHTEEN
When I saw him, I thought he was dead.
I ran across the warehouse, to the blood-soaked mattress where Cole was lying.
He opened his eyes when I knelt down beside him.
“We gotta get you to a hospital –”
A weak laugh sounded from him. “Yeah . . . right . . .” He rolled the back of his head against the wall behind him. “We don’t . . . have time for that.” He nodded toward the other side of the warehouse. “In that box . . . there’s some spare sheets. Start ripping them up.” His eyelids lowered a bit. “We’re going to need . . . some bandages . . .”
I don’t know how long it took, but I finally had the strips of cloth wound around his torso. Red was already starting to leak through.
With my own bloodied hand, I wiped my sweating brow. “That’s not going to last,” I said.
Cole had managed to hunch himself higher against the wall. His hand fumbled blindly across the mattress, until he found his cigarettes. When he got one lit and took a drag, he coughed painfully enough to drain his face white.
“Probably not.” Cigarette in hand, he had lowered his chin so he could look down at himself. “So I guess . . . we better get moving.”
“Get moving? What are you talking about?”
Another drag on the cigarette, another shuddering cough. “We got a job to do.”
“You’re crazy –” I stood up from where I had been kneeling beside the mattress. “You’re not going to make it.”
“Did I ever say I wanted to? But we gotta move now.”
“But . . . what about our plans? We spent all this time figuring out the best time . . . our best chance for pulling it off.”
“Screw the plans.” Cole crawled over to Michael’s body and pulled the assault rifle away from it. “According to that schedule you worked up, McIntyre always comes in late on Tuesdays, to review the overseas numbers before they go out to the branch managers in the morning. So he’s going to be there tonight. Plus, we caught a lucky break just now –”
“Lucky break? What the hell are you talking about? You’re about dead!”
“Maybe so, but McIntyre’s head of security actually is dead.” Cole tilted his head toward the corpse. “That’s one major sonuvabitch who’s not going to get in our way.”
“Okay, but there are plenty of others. Michael had a whole crew, just like him – and we still gotta get in –”
Moving awkwardly and painfully, Cole dragged over the duffel bag and started going through it.
“Yeah, getting in’s still going to be a problem. If we can’t get in, we can’t get a shot at McIntyre.” He looked up at me. “Got any ideas?”
I had to think, on top of pulling myself together. Seeing Cole like this was nearly as bad as when he’d been in the hospital. Maybe worse – when he’d been messed up before, all my plans in this world hadn’t revolved around him.
“Yeah . . .” I nodded slowly. “Maybe I do . . .”
I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out my cell phone. I flipped it open and scrolled down the numbers, to one I’d put in there a while back. Before I’d started making plans with Cole.
* * *
Waiting outside the warehouse, I finally spotted the camera van from the local news station.
The van pulled up at the curb. The only person in it was Karen Ibanez, the TV reporter who I’d talked to before. More than once, the last time being when I’d put the .357 up under her chin. She was the one I’d called.
“So what’s this all about?” She leaned her elbow out the side window and looked at me. “Whatever it is, it better be good.”
“It will be,” I said. “I promise.”
“Nice neighborhood.” The TV reporter swung her gaze around the area. “So why’d you want me to sign out a camera van and bring it here?” She turned her face toward me again. Her eyes went wide when she what I was holding in my hand.
“Kim,” she said. “You don’t have to do that. I thought we had an understanding.”
“We do. I’m just making sure you still understand it.”
“Totally unnecessary –”
“Just get out.” I kept the .357 steady on her. “And you’ll see what the deal is.”
I steered her into the warehouse, keeping the gun on her from behind. She was cool enough to stay quiet, her spine stiffening just a bit, as she spotted Michael’s corpse and the blood-soaked mattress.
“This the one?” Cole sat with his back against the wall. “I don’t recall ever seeing her on the TV.”
“Sure you do,” I said. “She covered the story when Braemer and the other equipment dealers got blown up.”
“Huh.” He peered closer at her. “Maybe you’re right about that.”
“What’s going on?” Ibanez looked over her shoulder at me. “Who’s this person?”
“Right now,” I said, “he’s the boss. Do what he says, and we’ll all be fine.”
I could tell she was seriously doubting that, but she didn’t say anything.
“Let’s get going,” said Cole.
“You’ll need to help out.” I pointed toward him with the gun. “He’s got some problems standing up and walking.”
Using Ibanez as a crutch, his arm slung across her shoulders, Cole managed to get outside the warehouse. Still holding the .357 in one hand, and with the canvas strap of the duffel bag slung over my shoulder, I opened up the back of the TV station van, so she could lay him down between the racks of remote broadcast equipment.
“I don’t know what you think you’re up to –”
“I told you. Don’t worry about it.” I dropped the duffel bag in with Cole, then slammed the rear doors shut, using the gun to wave her toward the side. “All you need to do right now is drive.”
On the passenger’s side, I kept the gun low enough that no one would be able to see it from outside the van. Ibanez put it into gear and pulled away from the curb.
“You sure about that?” She raised an eyebrow when I gave her the directions to where we were going. “That’s the middle of the city.”
“You said you wanted an exciting story.” I kept the gun on her. “We’re going to give you one.”
A little while later, she drove the van up to the entrance of the underground parking garage. The one below the building where McIntyre had his company offices.
“Use this.” I handed her the plastic card that I had dug out of Michael’s wallet.
She ran the card through the reader device at the garage entrance. The barrier arm lifted, and she drove on inside.
“Down the ramp,” I told her. “To the bottom level.”
Before she could do that, a uniformed guard popped out of the little office near the elevators.
“Hey! Hold it!” The guard walked toward the van.
I didn’t have to worry about the parking garage guard spotting my gun. Behind the seats, Cole had crawled forward, holding his own .357 toward the reporter’s head.
“Just tell him what we told you to say.” I tucked my gun inside my jacket, keeping a hand on it.
“Where do you think you’re going?” At the side of the van, the guard held up the clipboard he was carrying. “It’s nearly 6:00 p.m. Everybody’s gone home.”
Ibanez glanced over at me before replying.
“We’re here to do an interview,” she said. “We already cleared it with the publicity office.”
The security guard flipped through the papers on his clipboard. “You’re not on the visitors list.”
She held up the swipe card. “They sent us a pass.”
“I don’t know . . .”
From the passenger side, I leaned across the reporter. “Why don’t you call Mr. McIntyre’s head of security? He’ll vouch for us.”
The guard nodded and headed back to his office. We could see him looking for the n
umber on the list taped to the office’s window, then dialing the phone on the counter. A moment later, Michael’s cell phone rang in Cole’s hand.
“Yeah?” Cole held the phone to his ear and listened for a few seconds. “No problem. Let ’em in.” He flipped the phone shut and tossed it back into the duffel bag.
Leaning out the door of the office, the guard waved his okay to us. I prodded Ibanez with the gun I’d taken back out of my jacket. She put the van in gear and drove down the parking garage’s ramp.
“Good job,” said Cole when she finally parked the van. At the bottom level, there was no one else around us. “You were a real help.” He held the gun up against the back of her head. “Sorry to have to do this –”
“No.” I reached over and grabbed his hand. “Don’t –”
“We have to. There isn’t a choice about it.”
“Not with me along.” I looked over at the reporter. “You said you wanted a story. About McIntyre. Well, here’s the deal. Is there any doubt in your mind about us being serious? That we’re here to take care of something important?”
She glanced out of the corner of her eye at the gun behind her, then at the one in my hand. “No –” She shook her head. “You’re for real. Both of you.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I know you don’t like McIntyre, either. You told me that much. You’d just never been able to do anything about him before. So all you have to do is sit here until we’re done with what we came here to do – and then McIntyre will be all taken care of. The way you’d like him to be. The way a lot of people would like it. But if you don’t sit tight – if you call the police – then he won’t be taken care of. He’ll still be alive. And you won’t have much of a story. Nothing like what you’ll have if you just wait here.” I lowered the gun in my hand. “Does that make sense?”
Ibanez looked me straight in the eye, then nodded. “Perfect,” she said.
I figured that was the great thing about professionals like her. Anything for a good story. With visuals.
“You’ll be the first on the scene.” I tucked the shiny .357 back into my jacket. “You’ll know when it’s gone down.”
I looked back at Cole, pushing himself up with one hand where he lay behind the driver’s seat. He didn’t look happy with the arrangement.
“This is the stupidest idea I ever heard.” He kept the muzzle of his gun against the back of Ibanez’s head. “You can’t trust people to do what you need them to do. That’s like Rule Number One.”
“Fine,” I said. “Then haul your own sorry ass up there and nail McIntyre. But you won’t be doing it with any help from me.”
He glared at me for a moment longer, then shook his head. And lowered his gun.
“All right,” I told Ibanez as I pushed open the door at my side. “See you in a bit. Or not.”
I went around to the rear of the van and opened it up.
“This is going to be a lot of work.” Cole pushed himself toward me. “Without the wheelchair. Hope you’re ready for it.”
“Wait a minute.” Another thought, a less professional one, had just entered my head. “I’ll be right back. I’ve got something to take care of.”
I left him there in the back of the television news van. I walked away, digging into my jacket pocket for my own cell phone.
It rang for a while after I punched the number I wanted. I could picture the other phone ringing on the little table in Donnie’s room, next to his bed. Sometimes he caught a couple hours of sleep during the day. I didn’t know if I wanted him to wake up and answer the phone or not.
He answered. “Hello?”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.
“Kimmie – is that you?”
I’d just wanted to hear his voice again.
I closed up the phone and switched it off. I didn’t want him calling me back.
Not while I was busy.
“Okay –” I’d walked back to the rear of the news van. “Let’s get to work.”
NINETEEN
It was a long way, up to where we needed to get.
The elevator would’ve been faster – and a lot easier – but we couldn’t risk having it stop at one of the floors along the way. Even if the building’s offices had emptied out, there could still be a few stragglers around. The doors might’ve slid open and revealed to anyone outside the sight of me toting an ominously heavy duffel, its strap slung over my shoulder, and Cole slowly leaking blood from the arm he held clamped tight to his side.
That sort of thing tends to get people’s attention.
Which was exactly what we didn’t want right now. Once I had managed to get Cole into the emergency stairwell, I eased him down onto its concrete floor.
“Are you going to make it?” I regarded him with genuine concern. “You look like hell.”
“Don’t worry . . . about me.” He slowly regained his breath. “Just get up there. And get things ready.”
I hesitated for a moment, then turned and started carrying the duffel bag up to the landing above. Behind me, I could Cole laboriously crawling from one metal stair to the next.
By the time I got to the top, my heart was pounding in my chest. I dropped the duffel bag at the heavy steel barrier concealing the door to McIntyre’s company offices. I bent over, hands to my knees, and worked to catch my breath. I could just make out the slow, dragging sound way below, of Cole continuing his own long climb.
I didn’t wait for him – I knew he’d get up here eventually. I opened up the duffel bag and took out the heavy device that I’d helped Cole put together, days ago at his workbench in the warehouse.
The holes in the door-jammer’s side flanges lined up perfectly with the threaded studs I had driven into the wall when I had been here before. I pushed the device’s welded steel frame flat against the wall, then took a set of bolts and a battery-powered impact wrench from the duffel bag. A few quick pulls on the wrench’s trigger, going from one stud to the next, and the door-jammer was bolted tight to the wall.
I dropped the impact wrench back into the duffel bag, then grabbed a heavy-duty pair of pliers from it. One by one, I gripped the cotter pins with the pliers’ ridged teeth and pulled them free. When the last one came out, the compressed spring partially expanded, driving the thick blade-like piece through its slot in the device’s frame. With a sharp clang that reverberated through the stairwell space, the flat end of the blade struck the metal barrier.
Laying my ear against the barrier, I tried to detect if anyone on the other side had heard what I’d been doing. Nothing. As I pulled myself away from the cold metal, I could hear Cole on the landing below. I stepped over to the edge of the landing and looked down at him.
“What . . . are you waiting for . . .” The face looking back at me was grimly pale and haggard. “Go on . . . keep working . . .”
I picked up the duffel bag and carried it down to the landing where he was. He dragged himself into the landing’s corner and watched as I took out an industrial heat gun, switched it on, and aimed it at the edge of the doorway beside us. A few seconds passed before a hissing sound came from the door’s lock. The white, clay-like substance, the stuff that I had prodded in there while Cole had been talking to the building’s leasing agent, bubbled and expanded, forcing back the lock’s steel bolt. I pulled the door open, revealing the empty level beneath McIntyre’s offices. Cole crawled behind me as I stepped into the bare-walled, unfinished space.
There was more work needed, but nothing that I could do. Cole’s technical expertise was required. I stood beside him as he knelt next to the elevator doors. Using an electric screwdriver from the duffel bag, he dismantled the metal plate with the UP and DOWN buttons. I held a flashlight for him as he started sorting out the colored electrical wires inside.
“Hold on –” I glanced at the watch on my wrist. We were already running behind. It had taken a lot longer than we had planned, for Cole to drag himself up the stairwell to this floor. I set the flashlight on the floor a
nd went over to the window. I could see down below, on the street, McIntyre’s limo approaching the front of the building. “Here they come –”
I looked back and saw Cole still working on the elevator wiring, now with the flashlight gripped between his teeth, shining its beam inside the wall.
I could imagine what was going on in the parking garage. McIntyre would be getting out of the limo with a couple of his security guys. He’d say, “Has anybody seen Michael around?”
The one named Louie would shake his head no.
“Have him come to my office as soon as you get hold of him.” Then McIntyre would head for the elevator.
Up where we were, Cole twisted together the two wires he’d stripped. We both looked up and saw the numbers light up above the elevator doors. The 3, the 2, then the letter G for the ground floor. And then P1 for the first level of the underground parking garage.
McIntyre’s security guys would check out the inside of the elevator and make sure everything was all clear with it. Then their boss would get in.
Cole and I watched the little red numbers head the other way. The elevator was coming up again.
I knew what to do next. Cole had run me through the drill until I had it down cold.
From the duffel bag, I picked up the loaded AR-SF. With its butt, I smashed out the window I had just looked through, then scraped away the remaining shards. The sill dug into the base of my spine as I leaned out backward, aiming the assault rifle up toward the floor above.
Cole watched the little numbers, until the last one on the right lit up red. The elevator had gone past us and reached the top floor. “There you go,” he said. “Exactly where we want him.”
I took a single shot, shattering the window above me. I yanked my head in, diving for the floor as the jagged pieces rained down outside.
It didn’t require much imagination to picture the reaction on the floor above us. Just as the elevator doors were sliding open and McIntyre stepping out – the sound of a gunshot from somewhere outside the building and the window of the company’s reception area bursting into pieces –
